*This is Chapter 4 of Who Brought the Steak Tartare?, you may want to go back to Chapter 3 or start at the beginning.

I should now describe this vessel, the Investigator. It was merely an inflatable balloon in the shape of a sausage, standing on end. The interior was divided into six levels, stacked atop one another, with a narrow cylinder running through the sausage body on its axis, serving as a hallway through which the crew could access the various levels.¹

The lowest level, at one end of the sausage body, was divided into two chambers, one of which was a toilet, and the other a shower. Above this were two levels of sleeping quarters, each divided into four chambers. Above these was a galley, equipped with a large circular table and a great many cabinets and cupboards. Above this was a living area where the crew could perform their required daily exercises on various machines and otherwise use the space as they wished. The top level, was an observatory of sorts, with large viewing ports in every direction.

A command capsule docked at a port at the top end of the sausage body, and a rocket and fuel tank were attached to the bottom end. Two large inflatable storage spheres were connected to the sausage body, accessible from the galley level. With the exception of the command capsule, the entire vessel was constructed in space, above Earth’s atmosphere.

There were some Martians who criticized the flimsy nature of the Investigator, claiming that it would be completely destroyed by a collision with even the slightest pebble hurtling through space. But Barrow and Welles felt that space was such a vast area that a collision of any sort was highly unlikely. While their statistical computations were accurate, they neglected to allow for bad luck.